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New Tabloid by Murdoch Losing Sales

LONDON — Rupert Murdoch has endured a litany of blows in the unending phone-hacking scandal at his British tabloids. But one setback isn’t happening in Parliament, but on Britain’s newsstands.

The Sun, a brash daily tabloid that delivers mostly working-class readers splashy sports pieces, topless models and scandalous celebrity gossip all wrapped in a colorful, cheeky tone, has long been a pet of Mr. Murdoch’s. Lately, however, sales of the new Sunday edition — the one created to replace the shuttered News of the World — have slipped.

Sales of the Sunday edition have fallen 28 percent, from 3.2 million copies sold in the weeks after it first hit the stands in February, to 2.3 million in April, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The News of the World sold 2.7 million copies (or one copy for every 23 people in Britain), in July, when Mr. Murdoch closed the tabloid.

Analysts estimated that circulation at The Sun on Sunday would continue to fall until stabilizing at around two million copies, below Mr. Murdoch’s hope but still bigger than its closest competitor, The Sunday Mirror, which sold 1.1 million copies on Sundays in April.

Why hasn’t the Sun been able to fill the void left by the 168-year-old News of the World? British media analysts suggest that the News, which was known for its investigative exclusives, transcended social class in a way The Sun has not been able to do. Readers who don’t buy The Sun during the week don’t see it as the newspaper for them on Sundays either, said Douglas McCabe, media analyst at Enders Analysis here.

“The Sun brand is very much aimed at the working man,” Mr. McCabe said. “The News of the World was a one-off weekly picked up by those people but also by the educated middle class who buy The Sunday Times.”

“It’s difficult to underestimate how unique the News of the World was,” said Charlie Beckett, director of Polis, a media research organization affiliated with the London School of Economics.

“The front page would always have a sensational story that usually involved sex, politics and crime and might have even been true,” he said, adding: “The Sun hasn’t been able to repeat that.”

In a recent weekday edition, The Sun led with an “exclusive” about an obese teenager (“said to be 63 STONE”) who had to be evacuated from her home in South Wales. (A stone is 14 pounds.) A 25-year-old from Manchester named Rhian posed topless on Page 3. A blurb said Rhian was “shocked Europe is forcing Britain to give some prisoners the vote.”

In February, Mr. Murdoch traveled to London to personally introduce The Sun on Sunday, six months after News Corporation closed the Sunday-only News after revelations about widespread phone hacking emerged.

Photo

Rupert Murdoch in February, holding the first edition of The Sun on Sunday newspaper as it comes off the presses.Credit
Arthur Edwards/News International, via Associated Press

Mr. Murdoch visited the tabloid’s newsroom in the Wapping district of East London, and, shirt sleeves rolled up, sent a message to his detractors by declaring his commitment to the printed word.

“Having a winning paper is the best answer to our critics,” Mr. Murdoch told the newsroom upon announcing the Sunday edition.

Giddy with excitement, as if it were his first newspaper, Mr. Murdoch later posted on Twitter: “I will be very happy at anything substantially over two million!” and “Reports early, but new Sun edition sold 3m!”

The Sun remains the most-read newspaper in a country so enamored of tabloid gossip that an anti-litter campaign scattered throughout the London Underground reads: “The newspaper you’re reading is rubbish.” The Sun’s discounted cover price of 30 pence (roughly 50 cents) on weekdays and 50 pence (or about 80 cents) on Sundays has helped the newspaper maintain its lead, the audit bureau said in its most recent circulation report.

News Corporation declined to comment on The Sun’s circulation.

The Sun is also operating in a delicate era in Britain, when everything that newspapers do is under increased scrutiny, whether they are owned by Murdoch or not.

That scrutiny is especially apparent at The Sun. British investigators have said that The Sun participated in widespread bribery “to a network of corrupted officials,” and several of the newspaper’s top journalists have been arrested.

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Last month Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of both News of the World and The Sun, was formally charged with conspiring to obstruct justice.

Newsroom morale at The Sun has sagged as the management and standards committee established by News Corporation to investigate malfeasance at its newspapers has turned over hundreds of millions of journalists’ e-mails.

Created as an anti-establishment bible for the masses, with a flagrant sense of humor and a populist bent, The Sun has slowly morphed into a more family-friendly newspaper, Mr. Beckett of Polis said.

On a recent Sunday in May, the typically topless Page 3 model wore a bikini top. The Sunday front page devoted most of its space to a paid promotion for a free Ninja Lego toy.

Photo

In 1969, Mr. Murdoch held one of the first copies of The Sun.Credit
Press Association Wire, via European Pressphoto Agency

The features included an investigation into a Scientology “cult” that “ordered” a female member to have an abortion, and a perennial story about Pippa Middleton’s derrière.

“The Sun is a newspaper which in most, but not every, respect reflects Murdoch’s worldview,” Michael Gove, a Conservative member of Parliament, said in his testimony on Tuesday to the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics, which was created because of the phone-hacking scandal at News of the World.

Indeed, of all the roughly 175 newspapers that News Corporation owns globally, The Sun holds a special place in Mr. Murdoch’s heart, friends and associates have said.

It also drives the company’s print revenues in Britain. News Corporation does not break out profit on individual newspapers, but revenue from advertising in The Sun helps support less lucrative, more upscale titles like The Times of London and The Sunday Times.

Eager to expand his footprint on Fleet Street, Mr. Murdoch bought The Sun in 1969 for £800,000, assuring the previous owners that he would publish a “straightforward, honest newspaper.”

Back then News Corporation already published News of the World on Sunday and wanted to use its printing presses for the rest of the week. Today, it is The Sun that is using the News of the World’s idle presses.

Because of the abrupt closure of News of the World, News Corporation already had the capacity to print and deliver a newspaper on Sunday. That means a drop in readership at The Sun doesn’t have a significant impact on the company’s financial performance, analysts said.

“It’s all upside because the News of the World doesn’t exist anymore,” said Mr. McCabe, the analyst. “They haven’t gone out and spent serious money on a new staff or equipment.”

The Sun’s numbers also reflect an overall softening in the newspaper market in Britain. All British newspapers combined distributed 273 million copies in April, down 7.5 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to audit bureau data.

The initial excitement and marketing blitz of The Sun on Sunday helped lift the overall number of Britons who buy newspapers on Sunday to 10.7 million in February, from 7.7 million in January. That number fell to 8.7 million in March.

“At first a lot of people bought The Sun on Sunday who wouldn’t necessarily buy a paper on Sundays,” said Patrick Yau, a media analyst at British brokerage firm Peel Hunt. “Some stayed, but most didn’t.”

A version of this article appears in print on June 4, 2012, on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: New Tabloid By Murdoch Losing Sales. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe